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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: The GOP should take a stand for liberty in Patriot Act vote The GOP should take a stand for liberty in Patriot Act vote Posted by: Jon Dougherty April 13, 2015 •Protecting the country and following the Constitution should not be an ‘either/or’ proposition In 2011, Congress passed and President Obama signed another four-year extension of the USA Patriot Act, the ubiquitous piece of 9/11-era legislation that has been the bane of privacy advocates since it was leaked in December 2005 that the National Security Agency was spying on Americans. You may recall at the time that, according to The New York Times, in the months following Sept. 11, President Bush issued a secret order to the NSA authorizing the agency to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on thousands of Americans. The effect of the order, we would later learn, was much broader – the surveillance was much wider and involved far more data collection than previously thought. And again, much of it was conducted without the administration first getting a warrant, as required by the Fourth Amendment. Full disclosure: I am currently completing a graduate program in National Security; my focus is on intelligence analysis in particular. So I am instinctively deferential to the intelligence community; I understand what an extremely difficult job it is to sniff out terrorist plots before they are launched, especially in an environment where technology is constantly improving and where terrorist entities often have technical proficiencies similar to those possessed by some of our top analysts. It’s not easy figuring out what moves these guys are planning to make next. And of course, stopping terrorism is not the only function of the intelligence community. On top of that omnipresent threat, analysts must also keep track of what our competitors in Russia, China, India, the Middle East and elsewhere are doing. Protecting our national security is a global, full-time, 365-day-a-year job. That said, I also understand the negative impact such blatant domestic spying has had on our constitutional system; it seems that the more surveillance the NSA and other intelligence agencies conduct against the American people, the less our government may feel compelled to operate within its constitutional parameters on other matters. Our problem is this: The Patriot Act was a constitutionally passed law, in that a majority in Congress voted in favor of it, and President Bush signed it. But there’s more. Not only did the Patriot Act dramatically expand the government’s powers of electronic surveillance, but at nearly the same time Congress also passed an additional piece of legislation – the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40), which granted the Executive branch wartime powers that have historically been broad and expansive. It was under the auspices of the Patriot Act and the AUMF that Bush used his role as Commander-in-Chief to assume the authority to order the NSA to do what it did – and what it continues to do. Both of these laws remain in effect today, giving Obama the same broad, expansive wartime powers (the Global War on Terror might now be Overseas Contingency Operations, but the fight against terrorism continues, even if not on the same scale as before, in Iraq and Afghanistan). What’s more, federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have consistently ruled against civil rights groups that sued the government in an attempt to curb the NSA surveillance programs. That shouldn’t surprise anyone; the Judicial branch has historically been deferential to the government when it comes to national security issues. That’s largely because the judges hearing such cases don’t have expertise in intelligence matters and don’t want to be responsible for curbing the government’s power to root out attacks before they occur. There has been a lot of debate regarding this issue, especially after former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revealed that the government’s electronic surveillance operations were vastly larger and much broader in scope than first reported. But I haven’t seen much discussion about the true origin of these surveillance programs; that is, there has been little mention of the fact that they were the result of constitutionally passed legislation that provided the Commander-in-Chief incredibly broad power to protect the country during a time of war. Well, we now have an opportunity to have this discussion, because the Patriot Act is, once again, up for renewal in Congress, and already supporters of the law, as is, are making their case that it remains as necessary today as it was roughly 14 years ago. “[A]s the threat to our homeland from foreign terrorist groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda – or from foreign fighter flows to and from Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen – continues to grow, the House may consider reauthorization of key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act in April,” House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a Thursday memo to Republicans. “These provisions, which expire at the end of May, are necessary to maintain the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to monitor the communications and activities of foreign terrorists who seek to attack the homeland.” This is a boilerplate “argument” and not necessarily true. The intelligence community can continue to function in its role of collection and data analysis without having the power to mass-collect electronic data on every American. It is important to note that the intelligence community is not at fault here. The professional men and women who work in this highly stressful environment are acting on instructions given them by the elected members of the Legislative and Executive branches, who are, in turn, acting upon lawfully passed legislation and historically broad Executive wartime powers. That’s a large part of the reason I have been critical of Snowden in the past; he makes it sound like the NSA merely invented its own operating parameters and was acting in a rogue manner. That’s hardly the case. Also, lawmakers and presidents who were genuinely concerned with protecting the country after 9/11 should not be faulted, either; after all, a principle responsibility of our government is to protect and defend the country. And remember, the attacks killed nearly 3,000 Americans in a matter of minutes. Some will argue that the intelligence community was unable to prevent Sept. 11 from occurring because they were not empowered with enough surveillance authority; that is the argument the Kevin McCarthy’s of Congress are making. That is overly simplistic, however, and there is no way that assertion can even be proved. So the question really becomes, then, can – and should – our government protect the country and still follow the Constitution? I am arguing that it should not be an either/or choice. This is the case Republicans should be making in the coming weeks as they consider reauthorization of an overly broad law that is damaging our constitutional order. Jon E. Dougherty is the editor of Absolute Rights. His bio is here. Follow him on Twitter. What are your thoughts about the Patriot Act and whether or not it should be reauthorized in its current form? TELL US WHAT YOU THINK below! Poster Comment: The PATRIOT Act is a misnomer. It violates all aspects of freedom in this country, and everything that the founders fought for. ;) Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: BTP Holdings (#0)
The Patriot Act violates the US Constitution and the rights of "We the People".
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